Talk:New Cybernetics (Gordon Pask)

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[edit] Some sources on New Cybernetics

I started looking for some sources on New Cybernetics, and these are the first I found - Mdd 19:56, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Peter Harries-Jones (1988), "The Self-Organizing Polity: An Epistemological Analysis of Political Life by Laurent Dobuzinskis" in: Canadian Journal of Political Science (Revue canadienne de science politique), Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 1988), pp. 431-433.

The new cybernetics is a study of self-organizing systems, which looks beyond the issues of the "first cybernetics" - the politics and sciences of control - to the autonomy and self-organization capabilities of complex systems.

Unlike its predecessor, the new cybernetics concerns itself with the interaction of autonomous political actors and subgroups and the practical can reflexive consciousness of the subject who produce and reproduce the structure of political community. A dominant consideration is that of recursiveness, or self-reference of political action both with regards to the expression of political conciousness and with the ways in which systems build upon themselves.

  • Tom Darby (1982), The Feast: Meditations on Politics and Time on p. 220 states:

... the so-called "new cybernetics" ... attempts to move away from the cybernetics of Wiener. Whereas the old cybernetics is still tied to the image of the machine (i.e., physics), the new adheres to the image of organism (biology). The main task of the new cybernetics is to overcome entropy through using "noise" as positive feedback.

  • Gertrudis van de Vijver (1994), New Perspectives on Cybernetics: Self-Organization, Autonomy and Connectionism on p.97:

With Pask, we agree that the old cybernetics, the new cybernetics and, we like to add, the (old and new) cognitive paradigms are not that revolutionary different from each other. And as is mostly the case, the so-called new paradigms are in a sense "older" that the "old" paradigms. The so-called "old" paradigms were in most cases strategically succesful specializations in a general framework. Their sucess was based on a strong but useful simplification of the issues. The "new" paradigms are further specializations in the earlier one, or (as is mostly the case) a strategic retreat which boradens the specialized approach and is a return to the orginal, broader inspiration and outlook. This is what happens, we believe, with the new cybernetics, the post-cybernetics, as well as with the new cognitive approach...

Now if I would make an article with just these three sources it would look like this:


New cybernetics is a study of self-organizing systems. It looks beyond the issues of the "first", "old" of "original" cybernetics and their politics and sciences of control, to the autonomy and self-organization capabilities of complex systems.[1]

[edit] Overview

The so-called "new cybernetics" is an attempts to move away from the cybernetics of Norbert Wiener. Whereas the old cybernetics is still tied to the image of the machine and physics, the new adheres to the image of organism and biology. The main task of the new cybernetics is to overcome entropy through using "noise" as positive feedback.[2]

Unlike its predecessor, the new cybernetics concerns itself with the interaction of autonomous political actors and subgroups and the practical can reflexive consciousness of the subject who produce and reproduce the structure of political community. A dominant consideration is that of recursiveness, or self-reference of political action both with regards to the expression of political conciousness and with the ways in which systems build upon themselves.[1]

[edit] Old and New Cybernetics

Gordon Pask and others have stated, that the old cybernetics, the new cybernetics and, we like to add, the (old and new) cognitive paradigms are not that revolutionary different from each other. And as is mostly the case, the so-called new paradigms are in a sense "older" that the "old" paradigms. The so-called "old" paradigms were in most cases strategically succesful specializations in a general framework. Their sucess was based on a strong but useful simplification of the issues. The "new" paradigms are further specializations in the earlier one, or (as is mostly the case) a strategic retreat which boradens the specialized approach and is a return to the orginal, broader inspiration and outlook. This is what happens, we believe, with the new cybernetics, the post-cybernetics, as well as with the new cognitive approach...[3]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Peter Harries-Jones (1988), "The Self-Organizing Polity: An Epistemological Analysis of Political Life by Laurent Dobuzinskis" in: Canadian Journal of Political Science (Revue canadienne de science politique), Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 1988), pp. 431-433.
  2. ^ Tom Darby (1982), The Feast: Meditations on Politics and Time, p.220.
  3. ^ Gertrudis van de Vijver (1994), New Perspectives on Cybernetics: Self-Organization, Autonomy and Connectionism, p.97

[edit] Further reading

  • Tom Darby (1982), The Feast: Meditations on Politics and Time
  • Peter Harries-Jones (1988), "The Self-Organizing Polity: An Epistemological Analysis of Political Life by Laurent Dobuzinskis" in: Canadian Journal of Political Science (Revue canadienne de science politique), Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 1988), pp. 431-433.
  • Gertrudis van de Vijver (1994), New Perspectives on Cybernetics: Self-Organization, Autonomy and Connectionism.



[edit] Talk:New Cybernetics

Now what I am trying to tell is, that up here I made an new article form scratch and it is completely different from the content of the current article. I would therefor state the question, are we talking about the same thing here? - Mdd 20:24, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

P.S. This article leafs a view question unanswered: What is it about? What are the mean topics? How is it developed? By whom? With what applications? And what happened eventually? Did the new cybernetics of the 1980s turned to be just cybernetics since the 1990s? These questions can all be answered in the article above in new sections. First the first question should be taken care of. - Mdd 20:51, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Pask is asking for finite (Conversation Theory-CT) and infinite interaction (Interactions of Actors Theory- IA) to be considered as a basis for a new cybernetics (c.f. Minsky "Finite and Infinite Automata"). I think that's all there is to it. Except we can now talk about forces (carapaces around self-referential coherences, action etc) etc. Pask (1993 para 264 himself say "Conversation theory and Lp, even more so I.A.Theory, were put together with the intention of entire generality They are not intended as a universal theory, because of certain moral and aesthetic qualms". I think this may have be an attempt to get people away from sterile talk of subjective model building and start making clear sharp distinctions that could be applied to the bounds of autonomy- particularly in the Social Sciences. Pask's toolkit supported a post modern approach (hermeneutics and all) but I don't think there are many that understand this yet. Happy for you to make additions to the New Cybernetics article and, indeed, I will clarify what I have already written but I'm not clear your quotes are leading anywhere that "new" in Pask's sense. I'm not familiar with the work you cite, but 1. Harries-Jones uses new perhaps in the sense that there was more to SO than Wiener saw then gives an excellent description of why political beliefs survive. There's a place for that the second-order (C2) people will go along with that. 2. Darby too makes a good point. Amplifying noise may get us away from disorder if the "noise" signal is treated as a signal not just random junk (but it's not a good quote for making that point). 3.van de Vijve also makes some good points but they don't highlight the significant innovations by Pask's (1993,4,6) calls. I daresay he discussed this before with colleagues in Amsterdam but they don't run with the significant distinctions of force, finite productions and infinite processes. They may not have been so obvious at that time. I don't know enough about their work to say more. Why not post a query to CYBCOM and see what they say? No Dopps, the Carapace, CT and IA are a fairly comprehensive toolkit and the later axioms: similarities, differences, context, perspective, amity, faith, unity (not uniformity), evolution, observability, responsibility, agreement, agreement to disagree, permissive and imperative action should render some of this at least easily applicable. Without those elements it isn't "New" in the Paskian sense, to me at least.--Nick Green 22:31, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

First of all please don't post anything on CYBCOM on my behalf. I will look into this myselve some more and will give a response in a few days. - Mdd 22:42, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Impressed by the work you are putting in. I have emailed the Council re Cybsoc- I don't know one of the Fellows mentioned. Thanks for acting on Scriptnetics and Fibernetics maybe for the Uncylopedia but not us. Are ScoobyDuke or 128.135.57.4 and Steve@brunmedinc known before?--Nick Green 00:33, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I wonder where you refering to with "the work I am putting in". Is it:

  • ... the new draft, here above, I made for this article
  • ... it's follow up in User:Mdd/New Cybernetics
  • ... my upgrade of the Cybernetics section in the past month, or
  • ... my mission to unrattle the mistery of systems science and clear the termological systems jungle the past half a year?

The new draft I am making here is part of my mission. It becomes clear to me that the term "new cybernetics" is a rather crucial concept in cybernetics, or you can regard it as an crucial concept. In the whole of the systems sciences lot's of paradigma changing appeared somewhere around the 1970s. Ackoff started doubting Operations Research, Checkland doubted the hard systems thinking, Buckley proposed a Modern Systems Theory in Sociology, Chaos theory emerged... and now I have noticed several new forms of cybernetics also emerged. Now I have started to read some more about it and different authors sofar, refer to new cybernetics as to this group of news. This is what I want to check and double check some more, by developing the follow up mentioned. - Mdd 13:02, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Pask's New Cybernetics is all I know about. If others have used it in a different sense fine but we must make the distinctions clear. I'll keep an eye on the watch list more often. Didn't you do the work on the CybSoc? Anyway Pask (1993) was very critical of much work in ritual science, systems and cybernetics "I DO maintain, however, that "viable system" theory and "C.T.,Lp, and I.A." theory stand out, it is no accident that they do so because they are foundationally Cybernetic in type, as competent and very general if not universal theories, against a background of badly considered, pretentious and often meaningless general theories, greatly publicised and advertised by empty rhetoric." Don't look too hard for new material it may be superficial. Let's have criticism by all means, it's essential. Pask's New Cybernetics may be very important but it may be overlooked for many years yet. A rigorous coherence set theory with forces won't happen overnight. Still we can hope. He said "Indubitably, there is a scientific method and it is very elegant, employed with the proper type of evidence. But the elegant is defaced, becomes nauseating and ugly, if misused in order to ape, with gestures, grunts and grimaces the respectable character of otherwise untenable findings or displays." There's a new collection of papers due out next year. It may lead to some new work.--Nick Green 00:13, 6 October 2007 (UTC)